A French guide for repairing, selling and reusing goods

LocationFRANCEÎLE DE FRANCERennes Métropole Île de FranceStart/End date of the practice

Start: September 2006

End: March 2007

Topic of the practice

Waste Prevention - Promote the reuse of goods

Good Practice Information

Rennes Métropole Agglomération implemented a waste prevention policy in 2005 on its territory. The agglomeration had to face several issues: the increase of waste production and the growth of waste treatment costs.At this time,there were few structures enabling to repair or reuse household waste and the population did not know them very well. Many goods that should have received a second life and found a new utility by being repaired or reused ended in civic amenity sites or were collected with residual waste.
Several objectives were set:
-Reduce the amount of household waste brought to civic amenity sites or sent directly to the incinerator with residual waste;
-Identify structures able to repair products and to promote reuse;
-Promote a sustainable consumption by encouraging people to change their consumption habits
To achieve those objectives,Rennes Metropole decided to issue a guide listing existing actors of reuse and repair in the agglomeration to give them more visibility
The survey was conducted in 4 steps:An investigation of the existing networks was conducted to identify key actors and to gather available information.The II step was to identify potential reuse activities for each municipality of the agglomeration.To do so,a survey was sent to each municipal council but only 2 of 37 municipalities returned it.Associations were interviewed too.Then,a research by type of product was conducted to identify what were the existing reuse possibilities for each. 14 types of products were selected.The final step aimed at analysing the collected information.
Results are presented by family of product:
-Electronic family: household electrical appliances, hi-fi/TV/video/photos, computer hardware, CD/DVD/video games;
-Clothing family: textile and clothes, leather goods and shoes, nursery equipment
-House family: furniture, dishes, books and magazines, music instruments, toys
-Tools family: cycle, sport equipment, DIY tools, gardening tools

Evidence of success

For each product, all the actors identified on the agglomeration territory are listed as well as and the kind of service they can propose to help consumers to reduce their waste production: repair, rent, borrow, give, exchange, send or buy on a second hand market, obtain information. These actors can be easily contacted because their name and address are filled in.Several actors such as second hand markets and specific associations are associated with all the products. Temporal information is provided for specific events such as fleamarkets.1431 actions implemented by 644 actors were identified. Results can also be consulted in 3 summary tables:Products/actions: presents all the action possible per product; Municipalities/actions: presents all the actions possible per municipality; Municipalities/products: presents for each municipality the reuse’s possibilities per product.
Promoting repair or reuse actions enables to create jobs and particularly insertion jobs.

Contact details to obtain further information on the practice

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